Do you have difficulties with BARRE chords?? . . . . BARRING opens up a whole new world to Ukulele performance . . . . So,then, it’s about time we finally got that “barre” chord technique down. . . Check out these vintage YouTube vids wth Ukulele Mike Lynch

How often have we started to play a song and then notice there is a barre chord and we turn
the page to the next song? Or, more often, we just glance over that chord and move on?
This is a typical scenario with plenty of stringed instrument players but needen’t be once
we become comfortable with the technique. Once we can confidently play barre chords a whole
world of music will open up for us. This I can promise you.

More often than not barre chords only happen occasionally within a song. . . . We could be playing along just fine for 16 measures then in comes an Fminor or perhaps a Bbminor chord. . . Then we move on to more easily played fingerings. The mere fact that those chords only come a few times in any given song points out that we don’t really get good quality practice time to strengthen our barre chord technique. I am a strong advocate of designing a portion of our practice time to focused quality practice. . . . Take that F minor, for example, and single it out. Play it . . . listen critically to it. . . playing each string individually to ensure that each string is being held down securely and properly against the fret. Once we think it sounds good we congratulate ourselves then release the fingers and do it again. . . Repeatedly, over and over and over again. . . Then go back a few measures in the song and play up to and include that F minor chord. . . Does it sound better? Most likely it will. . . then after time and fatigue it may sound a little on the sloppy side again, but the point is taken . You have done quality focused practicing. . . Getting your fingers accustomed to the shape of the chord. . . Getting your fingers accustomed to how much pressure is needed. . . Getting your fingers accustomed to making the proper shift from the preceding chord to the F minor . . All of this is acquired by repeated looping of the chord and those on either side of it. . . Don’t just play straight through the song. . . That doesn’t really improve things. . . Take the time and patience to surgically select those sections of a song that are problematic and most of they may be barre chords. . . over time . . and many hours of “REAL FOCUSED PRACTICE” we will improve and we will finally get that barre chord technique down. . . As we practice and our hands may get tired or achey . . . time to stop. . . shake your hand out. . .stretch the fingers. . . relax your hand . . go on to something a bit more comfortable then come back to the barre chord again. It is only by consistent DAILY practice that will ever get to that point of barre chord perfection that we long for. I’ve known so many students who say they worked on their barre chords Monday evening and then again Saturday and that was it. Progress will rarely be achieved in that fashion. It takes daily diligent hard work but believe me, it’s worth it . . . . Happy Strumming, Ukulele Mike Lynch

Apart from Barre chords. . . I would like to remind everyone that I now have THREE Chord/Melody eBooks and they can be purchased as a combination pak at a discount.